How Our Chicken is Produced
Pilgrim's Pride is a vertically integrated chicken company, which means we are
involved in the entire production process, allowing us to control quality
throughout every step of our operations – from farm to plate.
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 In
the Hatchery
At Pilgrim's Pride, the chicken comes first, then the eggs. We buy day-old
chicks, called pullets, from primary breeder companies and raise them to be
breeders. The breeder hens lay eggs that are collected and taken to our
hatcheries, where they are incubated and hatched. When the eggs hatch, the
chicks are sent to contract growout farms to be raised to maturity.
 At
the Feed Mill
Pilgrim's Pride owns and operates 29 feed mills, which are strategically
located in the areas where we have
operations. Each year, we buy 324 million bushels of corn and 3.2
million tons of soybean meal as ingredients for our poultry feed.
We manufacture our feed using a proprietary mixture that includes corn, soybean
meal and other grains, and we feed our chickens only natural ingredients. We do
not use growth hormones of any kind in our poultry rations.
Once the feed has been formulated, pelleted and blended at the feed mill, it's
loaded into feed trucks that deliver the finished feed to local growout farms.
 On
the Farm
We highly value our relationships with our poultry growers, because their
success on the farm helps make possible the excellent Pilgrim's Pride poultry
products our customers expect and demand.
Pilgrim's Pride contracts with approximately 5,000 family farmers in the U.S. and
Mexico to grow chickens for our operations. We provide the birds, feed, and
technical and veterinary services, while growers provide the labor, housing,
litter, utilities and, most important, the knowledge and expertise that's
essential to maintaining the Pilgrim's Pride standard of excellence.
 Pilgrim's Pride
service technicians work with each farm family, visiting the farm regularly and
remaining on call for the farm 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to assure the
best possible growout conditions for our flocks
Important to the rural areas where our company has operations, poultry
production helps maintain the family farm.
Our contract growers are committed to being leaders in
environmental stewardship, pledged to maintain and improve the quality
of life where they live and work.
 Processing
and Food Production
Pilgrim's Pride operates 31 chicken processing plants -- 28 in the
United States and three in Mexico -- and 8 prepared-foods plants. We adhere to
the highest standards of product quality and food safety throughout the
production process.
Every Pilgrim's Pride processing facility in the U.S. is regularly inspected by
the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)
to ensure that our food products meet all federal food safety standards.
Each year we conduct numerous food safety and quality system audits using
accredited, independent, third-party auditing firms such as
Silliker and Cook & Thurber. We have conducted hundreds of these
audits and have never failed to achieve a score of excellent or better. We have
received numerous awards for food safety and quality, and earned a perfect 100%
score from the U.S. military during quality assurance audits in 2006.
Taking Care of Our Customers
For more than 60 years, our products have been made
with the freshest ingredients available, and that tradition continues today at
Pilgrim's Pride. We put the customer first with a relentless focus on quality,
innovation and customer service, and it's been that way since our company began
as a small feed and seed store in
rural east Texas in 1946. In fact, it's our company's mission,
a part of everything we do every day.
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